


Marks

by Urbenmyth



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Jon is Having A Bad TIme, Scars, Spoilers for season 4 finale I guess?, general misery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:28:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28216233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Urbenmyth/pseuds/Urbenmyth
Summary: Some scars are just scars. Others are stories.And with the Archivist, the story his scars tell are interesting indeed.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	Marks

**_That crawls_ **

The scars on his face aren’t, objectively, that bad. Pale and small, a collection of dots scattered irregularly across his face. Compared to other wounds, he almost got off lightly.

But he can feel underneath them.

The rotting, the putrefaction, the feeling of writhing under his skin. No matter what the doctors said about “no-long term damage”, he can’t help but picture them coming away in pus and rotting meat and writhing silver worms. A flood of decay flowing through him, just waiting to pour out whenever they itch.

But worse?

Sometimes, he thinks he wants it to.

At least he would know he wasn't alone.

**_and chokes_ **

The scar tissue on his legs and elbows from where he crawled through the tunnels is thick. It’s like a sheet across them, confining and restricting. It’s hard to move his limbs sometimes, an invisible pressure holding them in place.

This is normal, the doctors said. A common effect of extensive scars.

But it doesn’t _feel_ like inflexible skin or muscle damage.

It feels like they’re packed tight in thick dirt. That he only partially pulled himself out of the grave, and his limbs are still in there. Wrapped in thick mud.

Thick mud waiting patiently to drag him back down, and bury him forever deep below creation.

**_and blinds_ **

He can see fine, after Ny-Ålesund .

I mean, he can see _perfectly_. He hasn’t needed glasses since he worked here. He can see better than any human. He can see fine in the dark. He thinks he might still see fine if you gouged his eyes out.

The Black Sun blinded all who looked upon it. Tore them from sight and knowledge until they could not even find themselves.

Not him. Maybe the Eye protected him.

Or maybe, he ponders as he looks at the pale scars across his cornea, it didn’t.

Maybe he is blind.

He’s just no longer seeing through _his_ eyes.

**_and falls_ **

He hasn’t been able to catch his breath since that day with Mike Crew.

He gasps easily after only brief exercise. He sways when he has to be high up, and he struggles for air when a storm rolls in. Sometimes, just walking makes him feel like he’s about to topple.

A younger Jonathan Sims would attribute it to trauma and lung damage. Oxygen deprivation for 15 minutes? That will have some effect. All mundane. All explained. Placed in the debunked pile.

But now, he knows better.

Some part of him is still falling.

He doesn’t know who will decide what happens when he lands.

**_and twists_ **

Micheal stabbed him in the shoulder. He remembers that. It isn’t the sort of thing that’s easy to forget.

So why is the fractal, spiraling wound never on his shoulder? It’s on his right thigh today. Yesterday it was on his forehead, the day before his belly.

He never sees it move. He never feels it move. It’s just somewhere else, and the place it was is smooth, unharmed skin.

He’s asked Martin, but he just looked confused.

“That scar’s always been on your hand, remember? You pretended you cut yourself with a butter knife!”

Worst of all, he isn’t lying.

Jon's not even sure he's _wrong_.

**_and leaves_ **

He always feels cold.

Even with hot drinks and thick jumpers, he still feels that cloying, icy mist. He shivers next to a fire. It’s like the cold is embedded deep into his bones, wrapped around his very being. Frostbite of the soul.

But it’s more than that.

When he sees Martin, he still sees that empty, monochrome figure, barely visible in the fog.

More and more, when he pictures moments of joy or comfort or love, he remembers Martin blank faced and barely breathing. He remembers not laughter or conversation, but the quiet sound of lapping waves.

Worse than any scar or wound, he fears some part of his ability to connect has been torn away, replaced with ice water.

More than anything else, he will never forgive Elias for that.

**_and hides_ **

The thing calling itself Sasha didn’t leave any physical wounds. She never caught him in that tunnel, or in that attack on the institute. The Stranger inherently acts outside the normal, and _its_ scar is nothing so mundane as keratin.

It’s a memory. It plays in his head, whether he likes it or not. It flashes back, and sometimes he brings it back. His first meeting with Sasha, a small, plump woman with short blonde hair. Her cold smile, her doll-like stance. 

He knows that wasn’t what she really looked like.

Sometimes, he focuses on that memory. He draws on all his power, all his will and he _almost_ does it. He _almost_ sees another woman. A woman who…

And she’s gone.

And all he can remember is a stranger's mocking laughter.

**_and weaves_ **

He must be forgetting something. Obviously.

The bully from his childhood took the book off him before anything physical could happen. Trauma, yes, but “Mr Spider” only actually attacked the other child. It opened its door while Jon was still meters away, too close to catch. And besides, if the monster had come for him, he’d be dead. He was only a child. He must have escaped.

Nothing physically happened to him that day.

So those small, neat wounds so like a spider bite? One above each eye?

They must have come from another accident. A mundane one he’s forgotten, amidst all the supernatural horror.

Of course. That must be it.

**_and burns_ **

The doctors were amazed. Some of the most severe burns they’d ever seen, and no nerve damage? It was a straight-up miracle. His hand should be effectively destroyed, probably amputated, but here it was. They could even save most of the function.

Of course, this also meant they were baffled about how the pain was continuing. No nerve damage meant no explanation for the continuing feelings of heat or burning, or any suggestions for treatment beyond painkillers.

It wouldn’t matter, of course. It was never a miracle.

Destroyed nerves and severed hands can’t feel pain.

The flare-ups aren’t anything physical. They’re simply a reminder that even the Lightless Flame's compassion brings nothing but agony.

**_and hunts_ **

The scar across his neck came from a knife, but frankly, it looks more like a claw mark. Jagged and feral.

It should have healed long ago. And mostly, it is. He can even talk normally. How else could he cry out and reveal himself?

It’s mostly healed.

But sometimes, when he’s scared? When he feels like running? It opens, just a little bit. Just enough to let out a few drops of crimson blood.

Not enough to be dangerous.

Just enough to ensure anything following won’t lose his scent.

**_and rips_ **

It’s a strange feeling, simply...lacking ribs.

It’s not tied to a clear loss like a removed limb. Looking in the mirror, he looks normal. But it’s that feeling that something inside him is just...gone. That his body is missing something, and that it shouldn’t be.

He is always acutely aware of his flesh now. Of his body aching, wanting to return what was taken. And of the parts taken, writhing far away.

He hopes it was only the two ribs that the Boneturner took. But with all that complex machinery under the skin, all those networks of bone and vein and muscle and organs hidden from sight?

How can even _he_ know which parts of him are still his?

**_and bleeds_ **

The gash on his thigh is always bloody.

Not bleeding, but bloody. Raw. Red stains on the inside of his trousers and a faint coppery smell everywhere he goes.

He tried stemming the bleeding, once. He looked at it, and he remembered at what Melanie did to him, when he was just trying to _help_ her, how she turned on him the instant he showed up, how he attacked her after he was back from _hospital_ , all the sneers and threats and hostility and how he could grab a knife right now, how he could _find her_ and **_take that knife_ ** and…

He doesn’t think the Eye would let him march to another entity’s tune. Not now.

But just in case, he lets the wound stay bloody.

**_and dies_ **

Next to the rest, it’s frankly mundane. The End was never one for posturing. It’s just a small black mark over his heart. The doctors say it's shrapnel from the explosion, but to him, it looks like a vein.

Banks never told Jon what veins he saw when they met. He could go ask. He knows where the Corpse Roots are. He could ask The Coroner what death he sees for The Archivist.

But he’s afraid the answer will be soon.

And he’s afraid the answer will be never.

But most of all, he’s afraid that the answer will be that he died long ago, in a small cottage in Scotland, when he laughed and drank sweet tea and picked up the statement of Hazel Rutter.


End file.
